A 200-kilometre industrial belt along its seacoast is being touted as Yantai's new focus for economic growth over the coming five to 10 years, according to Zhou Qi, mayor of Yantai, in East China's Shandong Province.

In an coastal area extending to Yangmadao Island to the east, the city now has a total of 12 industrial parks of different types in its seven urban sections. Together with six national ports open to foreign trade along the coastline, the area is fast becoming one of the Jiaodong Peninsula's most dynamic industrial areas.

The Yantai Economic and Technological Development Zone, Yantai New and High-tech Industrial Zone and Yantai Export Processing Trade Zone, three State-level zones, are helping boost the rapid growth of the other nine provincial-level industrial zones in the area by having created a sound business environment for foreign investors, and also by providing services to the other zones and forcing them to improve their infrastructure and investment climate in order to remain competitive

Statistics from the Yantai Foreign Trade Bureau set the fixed assets value of the 12 industrial areas at more than 40 billion yuan (US$4.8 billion), one-fourth of it in infrastructure investments.

Last year seven of the 12 parks doubled their actual utilized foreign funds from levels of the previous year. During the January-July period this year the city increased the zones' actual utilized foreign funds by 80 per cent and contracted funds by 70 per cent.

This year the city has more than 600 new foreign-funded projects, with 60 per cent of the largest ones settling along the coastal industrial belt.

To date more than 2,500 foreign-funded enterprises have established production bases here, including 25 of the world's top 500 enterprises. Different industrial parks have different economic focuses. The Yantai Economic Development Zone has attracted 90 large projects with investments of more than US$10 million each, and is now a production base for passenger cars, excavators, cell phones and chemical fibres.

Yantai New and High-tech Zone has attracted more than 100 South Korean-funded projects, involved mainly in electronics manufacturing.

The Penglai Development Zone has been attracting a number of major foreign companies involved in timber processing, petroleum, chemicals and shipbuilding.

The Fushan High-tech Zone is building itself into a production base for auto accessories.

The mayor said that in the coming five years Yantai will invest 50 billion yuan (US$6 billion) in infrastructure facilities. And the number of overseas-invested projects will reach 5,000, and domestic-invested projects 2,000.

By the end of this five-year period, the industrial belt will be one of the most important processing and manufacturing bases in East China, Zhou added.

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